Sofacatro is a really good starter character, you should probably play him. Corruption + Bounty will work ok even if you don't upgrade either of those cards. You can also just build an allies deck and use the skulls to protect your allies from attackers. It's easier to make him work than Listrata, and before you get upgrades he might even be better than Pocchi.

Sofacatro is pretty bananas. The ability to deal with enemy minions without having any yourself is craaaaaaazy.

You mention "allies deck". Is there any other viable Green deck (before upgrades)? I have the feeling that most of the "cantrips" are pretty bad value. But maybe it's just because I am playing against the AI, where more often than not allies survive at least one turn (except against that damn Sofacatro).

Corruption-Bounty Sofacatro is probably pretty viable without much upgrading, and wants little to no allies. Corruption says "+1 gold for each skull you have, draw a card". Bounty says "Lose all gold, attack for each gold lost, draw a card". Since it's a slow deck based on -eventually- getting to exponential growth off Corruption, it's not a big deal if it runs a little slower than usual. And you have the built in skulls to deal with enemies trying to do a fast beatdown, so it's not like you need to be able to tech a max level Palisade wall into the deck for it to have enough survivability.

Ysadora's strategies are more upgrade dependent, but not terribly so. If you haven't encountered her yet, her ability is "Whenever your hero attacks, 75% chance to heal yourself for 1". The healing lets you use those cards like Courtly Intrigue and Masquerade ball that are normally too slow to work and build up a deck that's more powerful than your opponent's. Keep in mind that a deck of 10 Courtly Intrigues and 10 coins beats a deck of 10 Courtesans and 10 coins even with vanilla heroes, because you can play each individual Courtly Intrigue multiple times per turn, but you can deploy each Courtesan only once. The Courtesan player can get in for some damage on good draws, but over the long haul he loses.

The main barrier to entry with Ysadora is Ysadora herself. She's an epic hero, so it's very tough to get your hands on her. She's actually the only epic hero I have. I've played her a little bit, she's fun, but green is the class I've invested the least of my upgrades into :/.

Pocchi Holy Wrath and Pocchi Infinite are two other creatureless green decks I'm aware of, but I think they are both pretty upgrade dependent. Pocchi's gold each turn can't protect himself, so unlike Sofocatro he can't call an audible and slow down his game plan to remove a Ballista that is melting his face, he absolutely needs to do either the Holy Wrath combo or Infinite combo fast to win the game before he dies.

How does the inventory work? Do you "shuffle" it every time you add a card to it? If yes, cantrips might be slightly better than I though at first (I assumed you had to draw your 10 coins before you could draw the same card again).

Keep in mind that a deck of 10 Courtly Intrigues and 10 coins beats a deck of 10 Courtesans and 10 coins even with vanilla heroes, because you can play each individual Courtly Intrigue multiple times per turn, but you can deploy each Courtesan only once. The Courtesan player can get in for some damage on good draws, but over the long haul he loses.

How does the inventory work? Do you "shuffle" it every time you add a card to it? If yes, cantrips might be slightly better than I though at first (I assumed you had to draw your 10 coins before you could draw the same card again).

Keep in mind that a deck of 10 Courtly Intrigues and 10 coins beats a deck of 10 Courtesans and 10 coins even with vanilla heroes, because you can play each individual Courtly Intrigue multiple times per turn, but you can deploy each Courtesan only once. The Courtesan player can get in for some damage on good draws, but over the long haul he loses.

On a side note, what are all your multiplayer names? Just got my ass handed to me by some Splatmaster. Running all rare coins that have a chance to give Magic, then Usury and Holy Wrath. Annoying as all fuck.

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How does the inventory work? Do you "shuffle" it every time you add a card to it? If yes, cantrips might be slightly better than I though at first (I assumed you had to draw your 10 coins before you could draw the same card again).

Keep in mind that a deck of 10 Courtly Intrigues and 10 coins beats a deck of 10 Courtesans and 10 coins even with vanilla heroes, because you can play each individual Courtly Intrigue multiple times per turn, but you can deploy each Courtesan only once. The Courtesan player can get in for some damage on good draws, but over the long haul he loses.

I have to think about this scenario a bit longer.

You draw balls from the urn with replacement in War of Omens.

If your opponent plays Usury turn one, it is possible, though unlikely, to buy nothing but a Courtly Intrigue and a Collect Taxes and kill them that turn.

A cantrip can't draw itself, but aside from that, everything is getting shuffled in constantly.

Preview edit: Splatmaster is like, the third strongest player in the game, so don't feel bad.

The fact that everything is getting shuffled in constantly makes the game way more skill intensive than it first appears. For instance, say your hand is Coin-Coin-Coin-Collect Taxes, you have 3 gold left over from last turn, and there is a Courtly Intrigue you want in the bank. The natural play is to play Collect Taxes, buy the Courtly Intrigue, then possibly redraw the Collect Taxes or one of the other good cards in your deck with 4 coins in hand increasing the chance you draw something good.

However, you could also play a coin, then buy the Courtly Intrigue. That means that when you play Collect Taxes later that turn, the Collect Taxes has a chance to redraw the Courtly Intrigue you just bought.

However, the Courtly Intrigue purchase won't redraw the Collect Taxes, the Collect Taxes is still in your hand if you do it that way. Also, if you use a coin, you will be drawing from your deck with 3 coins in hand instead of drawing from your deck with 4 coins in hand. This gives you a chance of redrawing that coin. The disadvantage of drawing from your deck with 3 coins in hand instead of 4 is increased the more good cantrips there are in your deck, because if you start looping cantrips, -every- step of the loop has the extra risk of breaking the chain because you drew that coin you put into your deck.

But unless your deck already has many Courtly Intrigues in it, the best way to get more skulls is to accept the damage and play the coin so you can try to redraw the Courtly Intrigue. You have to make a value judgment based on the relative value of skulls compared to the value of gold, and the value of looping the other cantrips in your deck.

That leaves an empty slot that I drop random cards that I never buy into, like Bishop, Malediction and Liturgy. This deck is surely bad, but there may not be too much to be done about that until I have more cards. What I'm wondering is why it is bad. Are Militia/Mercenary/Soldier redundant? Courtesan/Ballista? Is Vintner/Ballista terrible synergy? Is the price curve off? What general principles should decks follow: do one thing well, or have something to play in every situation?

I did get one multiplayer win with this deck against a Daramek who had only one epic coin.

On a side note, what are all your multiplayer names? Just got my ass handed to me by some Splatmaster. Running all rare coins that have a chance to give Magic, then Usury and Holy Wrath. Annoying as all fuck.

I agree that the balance is way off base. Newbies are being paired up with obvious veterans.

But I figure that it's a quick way to get 50 Silver and an ingot--probably faster than any vs AI I can win--and I learn a few interesting tactics (that I'll never use for a long, long time).

It occurs to me that I could get my 50 Silver per MP match by starting a game and then go do laundry or something. That way the other guy is guaranteed a win. He'd have to deal with my turn taking 35 seconds each round as my time runs out.

But that seems really douche-y to me, so I don't do it. I imagine they just want to get their 150 as quickly as possible, and my pokey ass would slow them down. I'm trying not to justify it by saying I need it more than they do.

I tend to feel like Marshal is awful unless you are doing a crazy Benediction deck or have truckloads of walls (The actual walls Palisade and Rampart, not Militias). It has a low health to cost ratio and is very more-winnish. If you manage to stick an on-turn 2 resources minion, that's enough of a strong accomplishment, trying to double that is greedy and unnecessary. Marshal made a lot more sense back when you had to have a Marshal just so old Wealthy Patron would do what new Wealthy Patron does.

Catapult is not great. Again, health to cost ratio is really important.

I think starter decks do a good deal better at "have something to play for every situation" than they do at "do one thing well". If there's a card in your bank that's the PERFECT answer for you opponent's strategy, you can get away with it being one turn late. If you're trying to race streamlined strategy vs. streamlined strategy, being slower hurts.

Unupgraded Malediction is incredibly expensive, but it's got to be stronger than Marshal. You don't have to buy it every game, but you can buy it in those games where it is really appropriate for the strategy your opponent is using.

If you have Serf (3), I would run him in this type of deck. Reiterating the point that making sure you have enough health to activate at least one or two allies is more important than being greedy and trying to get a high cost, low health unit with a huge effect out.

Militia/Mercenary/Soldier/Knight is actually the full chain. I think Mercenary is used in aggressive Pocchi decks, Militia is used in tithe/liturgy/spy network or infinite sort of decks, and Knight is used in decks that want an expensive, powerful blocker. Solder is probably the most homeless one, but Knight is rare and Soldier is scarce so I think that causes a lot of people to prefer Soldier.

There is a hero pack, 4 four card packs, 3 five card packs, and 3 six card packs. You can open them in any order. It's unanimous that you should open the hero pack first so you know which cards synergize with your hero. It's also mostly unanimous that you should open the biggest packs last so that you have more choices in order to figure out what things your deck is missing in the last few picks. I think common knowledge is wrong though, because if you open a 6 pack it's highly likely there will be a god tier card that you will be forced to windmill slam even if it is unrelated to the specific needs of your deck, and it's more likely a 4 pack will let you choose between mediocre cards and it's better to know later on whether you need a mediocre attacker or a mediocre blocker.

All the cards are fully upgraded, the cost is right on the card. Sometimes you will get offered the chance to get another copy of the same card. When you get that opportunity, the second copy of the card is one level worse.

Lots of draft games go to attrition, few of them are won by a player that rushdowns the other guy. You want to prioritize cards that make your overall deck quality better like green cards a lot. But if you go too overboard with that it is possible to die.

Dowager Anibaldo, Shofet Daru, and Doge Monteferro are the best three heroes by a decent margin IMO. Ashbar Akar is almost as good as those guys, but not quite on their level. Brigand Lucca and Xalia are both awful IMO. Be sure to not let Brigand steal stuff from you when you fight him even if that means skipping your own draws. I'm not sure how to value aline after her nerfs but she seems a lot easier to deal with now so I'd try not to pick her.

Some of the best power cards are Goat Poultice, Goat Poultice, Shrine of Rebirth, Seduce, Stolen Plans, Strategem, and Summoning Portal. That reminds me, you usually want to draft exactly 1, maybe 2 purple onhold cards, Summoning Portal being the best one. Rite of Brood, Usury, Miracle, Malediction, Lackey (not with Doge!!), Synod, Mayhem, Fertility Offering, Ceremonial Dance, and Enchanted Urn are some other exciting cards to have.

Playing the deck well can be every bit as important as drafting it. Don't throw a huge minion into your opponent's seduce. If you're getting Empty Bank Syndrome, don't buy a cheap card and cause a chance to restock that cheap card back again. Don't buy a minion that's just going to get immediately killed if you can do something more useful first and get it later

So I still don't have a purple hero, but there's some things I don't understand. On the purple cards, underneath the charges, there's a symbol. For some of the the cards, it makes sense (the ones that charge on hold have a hand, the ones you can charge with life have a heart). But some of them don't seem to have any way to charge them, and they have various other symbols. What do they mean?

I never noticed the little hand symbol for on hold cards or anything, but I can tell you that everything you need to know is indeed written on the card. If the text of the card doesn't describe any way to charge it up, then there's "no way to charge it up", you can only use special effects that say they charge friendly cards to actually charge it beyond its starting charge level. (Gilded Scribe, Blood Pact, Cantillation, that weird inscription thingy that no one uses ever, and Jesmai's hero ability)

The Endazu have symbols denoting their four classes of cards on the cards themselves. The other three factions don't do that for some reason. They just mean Incantation, Inscription, Anima, and Goetia.

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So I still don't have a purple hero, but there's some things I don't understand. On the purple cards, underneath the charges, there's a symbol. For some of the the cards, it makes sense (the ones that charge on hold have a hand, the ones you can charge with life have a heart). But some of them don't seem to have any way to charge them, and they have various other symbols. What do they mean?

There are some ways to charge up the cards. The Gilded Scribes card looks like it can charge up those other cards.

Also, I unlocked the Jesmai hero. She can charge up Anima cards with magic. It's a pretty nice ability. I can buy the Gilded Warriors card and rather than wait for it to reach level 5, I can play it and then buff it up to level 5 right away. Of course this works best if I have cards to get me more magic.

Got the basic purple hero too! I've been avoiding their cards, so I am far away from getting a purple deck, but I guess the hard part is done.

I got some tricky scarce card choices too, the main one being Synod, Benediction, Hemlock. I chose Hemlock just so that my blue deck would finally be viable, but I had to think hard and long about it. I've also opened Feast (and Festival) and the Scrivener, I might be able to put some fancy ritual deck together!

I still haven't touched multiplayer. Sounds like a terrrrrrrible idea.